The most cited original articles in brain imaging of children with cerebral palsy: A bibliometric Analysis Between 1984 and 2019
Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a group of lifelong conditions that affect movement and co-ordination. This is due to brain development being affected before, during, or immediately after birth. In recent years, brain imaging has become important to make an early and accurate diagnosis of CP. However, it is still unclear on exactly what the focus of the images should be for helping future clinicians diagnose CP. The purpose of this paper was to gather articles that have been highly referenced in the field of brain imaging for future CP research. This would be helpful in informing future clinicians the exact modality of imaging to use for an efficient diagnosis of the condition.
The paper meets their purpose by searching the literature in a systematic way, including articles mentioning imaging in children with CP and being published between 1984 and 2019. Two reviewers confirmed whether the article should be included. For each included article, the following information was collected: number of references to the paper in a year and in total, reason for the research, the type of study and image used, age of the individuals, country of the first author, and the journal that it was published in.
From the 50 included studies, 35 of them used just one type of image to diagnose CP; whereas, in more recent years, 15 used more than one type of imaging tool. An MRI is an imaging scan which uses magnetic fields and radio waves to gain detailed images of organs, such as the brain. This was the most commonly used type of imaging scan from the articles reviewed. The most common diagnosis and disease process reported in 74% of the articles was spastic CP and hemiplegia. When considering management of patients with CP, most of the articles focused on constraint induced movement therapy. This is a type of treatment technique where the patient would increase their use of the limb that is affected. Most of the articles in this review were of a descriptive nature. Also, some studies mentioned having to put children under a state of calm or sleep, so they could get the images. The paper suggests that more research should be done on how to get the brain images in safer ways without putting the children to sleep. There is evidence in this paper of the ways in which these images could be used to find out the cause of CP. Therefore, linking specific irregularities in the brain structure seen on the images to the symptoms seen in the patient.
The results of the paper show how a combination of brain imaging, along with tools that record electrical activity of brain cells and ion channels, could be useful for future research in children with CP. Furthermore, as recent studies included in this paper have shown that there may be genetic causes of CP, imaging the brain along with studying the genes, could provide more information. The study also concludes that using brain imaging to evaluate treatment therapies is a good avenue for the future. This study is important in gathering all the different articles that give useful information on brain imaging in children with CP. This information can be used in many ways by scientific researchers, clinicians and imaging specialists.
‘The most cited original articles in brain imaging of children with cerebral palsy: A bibliometric Analysis Between 1984 and 2019’ by Wu et al.